Originally Posted by Trakhak

You'll never find a new freewheel that comes from the factory packed with grease. Working in a bike shop in the '70's, we used a Stein grease injector tool on a few freewheels, having made the common mistake of thinking that, since all the other ball bearing assemblies on bikes require grease, therefore, freewheels require grease. And, after all, the tool exists to enable the injection of grease, so it must be a good idea, right?

Unfortunately, New Haven winters get to be cold enough to cause grease to thicken to the point where the tiny springs are unable to push the freewheel pawls through the now-gummy grease, rendering the freewheel inoperative. All it took was a few unhappy customers with damaged freewheel pawls for us to figure out that using grease in freewheels was a bad idea..